Automated Model Generation For Computer Based Business Process

ABSTRACT

A system for generating a model representing an existing computer based business process involves analysing existing source content ( 910 ) which has annotations ( 920 ) added, to provide information for the modelling. Static analysis of the annotations can provide some of the information. Other information can be discovered at run time if the annotations alter the run time behaviour to generate monitoring events showing the behaviour. The annotations need not be restricted to codes or symbols or structures of the language of the source content, and can use concepts closer to those in the model being generated. Using annotations rather than manual modelling can reduce errors and lead to better predictions of performance from the model, and result in better reconfiguration of the software or the computing infrastructure to make more efficient usage of shared resources.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application relates to copending US applications of even datetitled “MODEL BASED DEPLOYMENT OF COMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS ONDEDICATED HARDWARE” (applicant reference number 200702144), titled“VISUAL INTERFACE FOR SYSTEM FOR DEPLOYING COMPUTER BASED PROCESS ONSHARED INFRASTRUCTURE” (applicant reference number 200702356), titled“MODELLING COMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS FOR CUSTOMISATION ANDDELIVERY” (applicant reference number 200702363), titled “MODELLINGCOMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS AND SIMULATING OPERATION” (applicantreference number 200702377), titled “SETTING UP DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTFOR COMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS”, (applicant reference number200702145), and titled “INCORPORATING DEVELOPMENT TOOLS IN SYSTEM FORDEPLOYING COMPUTER BASED PROCESS ON SHARED INFRASTRUCTURE”, (applicantreference number 200702601), and previously filed US application titled“DERIVING GROUNDED MODEL OF BUSINESS PROCESS SUITABLE FOR AUTOMATICDEPLOYMENT” (Ser. No. 11/741,878) all of which are hereby incorporatedby reference in their entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to methods of generating a model representing atleast part of a computer based business process having a number offunctional steps, from existing source content specifying the functionalsteps, and from source content of software entities implementing thefunctional steps, and relates to corresponding systems and software.

BACKGROUND

Physical IT (information technology) infrastructures are difficult tomanage. Changing the network configuration, adding a new machine orstorage device are typically complicated and error prone manual tasks.In most physical IT infrastructure, resource utilization is very low:15% is not an uncommon utilization for a server, 5% for a desktop. Toaddress this, modern computer infrastructures are becoming increasingly(re)-configurable and more use is made of shared infrastructure in theform of data centres provided by service providers.

Hewlett Packard's UDC (Utility Data Centre) is an example which has beenapplied commercially and allows automatic reconfiguration of physicalinfrastructure: processing machines such as servers, storage devicessuch as disks, and networks coupling the parts. Reconfiguration caninvolve moving or starting software applications, changing allocationsof storage space, or changing allocation of processing time to differentprocesses for example. Another way of contributing morereconfigurability, is by allowing many “virtual” computers to be hostedon a single physical machine. The term “virtual” usually means theopposite of real or physical, and is used where there is a level ofindirection, or some mediation between the resource user and thephysical resource.

In addition some modern computing fabrics allow the underlying hardwareto be reconfigured. In once instance the fabric might be configured toprovide a number of four-way computers. In another instance it might bere-configured to provide four times as many single processor computers.

It is extremely complex to model the full reconfigurability of theabove. Models of higher level entities need to be recursive in the senseof containing or referring to lower level entities used or required toimplement them (for example a virtual machine VM, may operate faster orslower depending on what underlying infrastructure is currently used toimplement it (for example hardware partition nPAR or virtual partitionvPAR, as will be described in more detail below). This means a modelneeds to expose the underlying configurability of the next generationcomputer fabrics—an nPAR consists of a particular hardware partition.This makes the models so complex that it becomes increasingly difficultfor automated tools (and humans) to understand and process the models,to enable design and management of: a) the business process, b) theapplication and application configuration, and c) the infrastructure andinfrastructure configuration.

The need to model the full reconfigurability and recursive nature of asystem is exemplified in the DMTF's profile for “System Virtualization,Partitioning and Clustering”:http://www.dmtf.org/apps/org/workgroup/redundancy/

Another example of difficulties in modelling is WO2004090684 whichrelates to modeling systems in order to perform processing functions. Itsays “The potentially large number of components may render the approachimpractical. For example, an IT system with all of its hardwarecomponents, hosts, switches, routers, desktops, operating systems,applications, business processes, etc. may include millions of objects.It may be difficult to employ any manual or automated method to create amonolithic model of such a large number of components and theirrelationships. This problem is compounded by the typical dynamic natureof IT systems having frequent adds/moves/changes. Secondly, there is noabstraction or hiding of details, to allow a processing function tofocus on the details of a particular set of relevant components whilehiding less relevant component details. Thirdly, it may be impracticalto perform any processing on the overall system because of the number ofcomponents involved.”

There have been attempts to automatically and rapidly provide computinginfrastructures: HP's Utility Data Center, HP Lab's SoftUDC, HP's Caveoand Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (which can be seen athttp://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011). All of theseprovide computing infrastructures of one form or another, and some havebeen targeted at testers and developers, e.g. HP's Utility Data Center.

Aris from IDS-Scheer is a known business process modelling platformhaving a model repository containing information on the structure andintended behaviour of the system. In particular, the business processesare modelled in detail. It is intended to tie together all aspects ofsystem implementation and documentation.

Aris UML designer is a component of the Aris platform, which combinesconventional business process modelling with software development todevelop business applications from process analysis to system design.Users access process model data and UML content via a Web browser,thereby enabling processing and change management within a multi-userenvironment. It can provide for creation and communication ofdevelopment documentation, and can link object-oriented design and codegeneration (CASE tools). It relies on human entry of the models.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An object is to provide improved apparatus or methods. In one aspect theinvention provides:

A method of generating a model representing at least part of a computerbased business process having a number of functional steps, fromexisting source content specifying the functional steps, and from sourcecontent of software entities implementing the functional steps, thesource content having annotations added, to provide information formodelling, the method having the steps of:

collecting the information provided by the annotations, andusing the information collected by the collector, to generaterepresentations of the functional steps and software entities whichimplement the functional steps, and arranged to incorporate theserepresentations in the model.

Using annotations for discovering the information about the businessprocess and the software entities implementing the functional steps canenable modelling to be carried out more efficiently and flexibly, as theannotations need not be restricted to codes or symbols or structures ofthe language of the source content. Hence the annotations can useconcepts closer to those in the model being generated. Compared togenerating the model manually, less input from scarce skilled humans isneeded, and the risk of errors can be reduced, leading to betterpredictions of performance from the model. This in turn can lead to abetter or best configuration of the software or the computinginfrastructure, which can lead to more efficient usage of availableresources for live deployments, and hence lower costs. This isparticularly useful for the common situation where many businessprocesses share the available resources.

Embodiments of the invention can have any additional features, withoutdeparting from the scope of the claims, and some such additionalfeatures are set out in dependent claims and in embodiments describedbelow.

Another aspect provides software on a machine readable medium which whenexecuted carries out the above method.

Another aspect provides a system for generating a model representing atleast part of a computer based business process having a number offunctional steps, from existing source content specifying the functionalsteps, and from source content of software entities implementing thefunctional steps, the source content having annotations added, toprovide information for modelling, the system having: a collectorarranged to collect the information provided by the annotations, and amodeller arranged to use the information collected by the collector, togenerate representations of the functional steps and software entitieswhich implement the functional steps, and arranged to incorporate theserepresentations in the model.

Other aspects can encompass corresponding steps by human operators usingthe system, to enable direct infringement or inducing of directinfringement in cases where the infringers system is partly or largelylocated remotely and outside the jurisdiction covered by the patent, asis feasible with many such systems, yet the human operator is using thesystem and gaining the benefit, from within the jurisdiction. Otheradvantages will be apparent to those skilled in the art, particularlyover other prior art. Any of the additional features can be combinedtogether, and combined with any of the aspects, as would be apparent tothose skilled in the art. The embodiments are examples only, the scopeis not limited by these examples, and many other examples can beconceived within the scope of the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Specific embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way ofexample, with reference to the accompanying Figures, in which:

FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of an embodiment showing models, adaptiveinfrastructure and a management system,

FIG. 2 shows a schematic view of some operation steps by an operator andby the management system, according to an embodiment,

FIG. 3 shows a schematic view of some of the principal actions andmodels according to an embodiment,

FIG. 4 shows a schematic view of a sequence of steps from businessprocess to deployed model in the form of a model information flow, MIF,according to another embodiment,

FIG. 5 shows a sequence of steps and models according to anotherembodiment,

FIG. 6 shows steps in deriving a grounded model according to anembodiment,

FIG. 7 shows an arrangement of master and slave application servers fora distributed design, according to an embodiment,

FIG. 8 shows parts of a master application server for the embodiment ofFIG. 7,

FIG. 9 shows an arrangement of virtual entities on a server, for use inan embodiment,

FIG. 10 shows an example of a sales and distribution business process(SD) Benchmark Dialog Steps and Transactions,

FIG. 11 shows an example Custom Model Instance for SD Benchmark,

FIG. 12 shows a class diagram for an Unbound Model Class,

FIG. 13 shows an example of a template suitable for a decentralised SDexample,

FIG. 14 shows a Grounded Model instance for a decentralized SD,

FIG. 15 shows another example of a template, suitable for a centralisedsecure SD example,

FIG. 16 shows an overview of an embodiment of a system for generating amodel, based on annotations,

FIG. 17 shows some of the principal steps according to an embodiment,

FIG. 18 shows an embodiment relating to static generation ofdocumentation, automation model, and executable code from annotatedsource content,

FIG. 19 shows an embodiment relating to run-time generation andmodification of documentation and automation models, from run-time modelreporting functionality, and

FIGS. 20, 21 and 22 show method steps according to embodiments.

DESCRIPTION OF SPECIFIC EMBODIMENTS Definitions

“Annotation” is intended encompass any extra information added to thesource content of any software entity used directly or indirectly by abusiness process in order to describe the entity in terms of a set ofconcepts used by a software model of the business process and itsassociated software components. Annotations may be used by a compiler orother processor of the source content to modify the process ofgenerating executable logic from the source content in order to changethe behaviour of that executable logic to allow extraction of theinformation contained in the annotations.

“non-functional requirements” can encompass how well the functionalsteps are achieved, in terms such as performance, security properties,cost, availability and others. It is explained in Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirements) fornon-functional requirements as follows—“In systems engineering andrequirements engineering, non-functional requirements are requirementswhich specify criteria that can be used to judge the operation of asystem, rather than specific behaviors. This should be contrasted withfunctional requirements that specify specific behavior or functions.Typical non-functional requirements are reliability, scalability, andcost. Non-functional requirements are often called the ilities of asystem. Other terms for non-functional requirements are “constraints”,“quality attributes” and “quality of service requirements”.”

Functional steps can encompass any type of function of the businessprocess, for any purpose, such as interacting with an operator receivinginputs, retrieving stored data, processing data, passing data orcommands to other entities, and so on, typically but not necessarily,expressed in human readable form . . . .

“Deployed” is intended to encompass a modelled business process forwhich the computing infrastructure has been allocated and configured,and the software application components have been installed andconfigured ready to become operational. According to the context it canalso encompass a business process which has started running.

“suitable for automated deployment” can encompass models which providemachine readable information to enable the infrastructure design to bedeployed, and to enable the software application components to beinstalled and configured by a deployment service, either autonomously orwith some human input guided by the deployment service.

“business process” is intended to encompass any process involvingcomputer implemented steps and optionally other steps such as humaninput or input from a sensor or monitor for example, for any type ofbusiness purpose such as service oriented applications, for sales anddistribution, inventory control, control or scheduling of manufacturingprocesses, for example. It can also encompass any other processinvolving computer implemented steps for non business applications suchas educational tools, entertainment applications, scientificapplications, any type of information processing including batchprocessing, grid computing, and so on. One or more business processsteps can be combined in sequences, loops, recursions and branches toform a complete Business Process. Business process can also encompassbusiness administration processes such as CRM, sales support, inventorymanagement, budgeting, production scheduling and so on, and any otherprocess for commercial or scientific purposes such as modelling climate,modelling structures, or modelling nuclear reactions.

“application components” is intended to encompass any type of softwareelement such as modules, subroutines, code of any amount usableindividually or in combinations to implement the computer implementedsteps of the business process. It can be data or code that can bemanipulated to deliver a business process step (BPStep) such as atransaction or a database table. The Sales and Distribution (SD) productproduced by SAP is made up of a number of transactions each having anumber of application components for example.

“unbound model” is intended to encompass software specifying in any way,directly or indirectly, at least the application components to be usedfor each of the computer implemented steps of the business process,without a complete design of the computing infrastructure, and mayoptionally be used to calculate infrastructure resource demands of thebusiness process, and may optionally be spread across or consist of twoor more sub-models. The unbound model can also specify the types orversions of corresponding execution components such as applicationservers and database servers, needed by each application component,without specifying how many of these are needed for example.

“grounded model” is intended to encompass software specifying in anyway, directly or indirectly, at least a complete design of the computinginfrastructure suitable for automatic deployment of the businessprocess. It can be a complete specification of a computinginfrastructure and the application components to be deployed on theinfrastructure.

“bound model” encompasses any model having a binding of the GroundedModel to physical resources. The binding can be in the form ofassociations between ComputerSystems, Disks, StorageSystems, Networks,NICS that are in the Grounded Model to real physical parts that areavailable in the actual computing infrastructure. “infrastructure designtemplate” is intended to encompass software of any type which determinesdesign choices by indicating in any way at least some parts of thecomputing infrastructure, and indicating predetermined relationshipsbetween the parts. This will leave a limited number of options to becompleted, to create a grounded model. These templates can indicate anallowable range of choices or an allowable range of changes for example.They can determine design choices by having instructions for how tocreate the grounded model, or how to change an existing grounded model.

“computing infrastructure” is intended to encompass any type of resourcesuch as hardware and software for processing, for storage such as disksor chip memory, and for communications such as networking, and includingfor example servers, operating systems, virtual entities, and managementinfrastructure such as monitors, for monitoring hardware, software andapplications. All of these can be “designed” in the sense of configuringand/or allocating resources such as processing time or processorhardware configuration or operating system configuration or disk space,and instantiating software or links between the various resources forexample. The resources may or may not be shared between multiplebusiness processes. The configuring or allocating of resources can alsoencompass changing existing configurations or allocations of resources.Computing infrastructure can encompass all physical entities or allvirtualized entities, or a mixture of virtualized entities, physicalentities for hosting the virtualized entities and physical entities forrunning the software application components without a virtualized layer.

“parts of the computing infrastructure” is intended to encompass partssuch as servers, disks, networking hardware and software for example.

“server” can mean a hardware processor for running application softwaresuch as services available to external clients, or a software elementforming a virtual server able to be hosted by a hosting entity such asanother server, and ultimately hosted by a hardware processor.

“AIService” is an information service that users consume. It implementsa business process.

“Application Constraints Model” can mean arbitrary constraints oncomponents in the Customized Process, Application Packaging andComponent Performance Models. These constraints can be used by tools togenerate additional models as the MIF progresses from left to right.

“ApplicationExecutionComponent” is for example a (worker) process,thread or servlet that executes an Application component. An examplewould be a Dialog Work Process, as provided by SAP.

“ApplicationExecutionService” means a service which can manage theexecution of ApplicationExecutionComponents such as Work Processes,servlets or data-base processes. An example would be an ApplicationServer as provided by SAP. Such an application server includes thecollection of dialog work processes and other processes such as updateand enqueue processes as shown in the diagram of the master applicationserver. (FIG. 8).

“Application Packaging Model” is any model which describes the internalstructure of the software: what products are needed and what modules arerequired from the product, and is typically contained by an unboundmodel.

“Application Performance Model” means any model which has the purpose ofdefining the resource demands, direct and indirect, for each Businessprocess (BP) step. It can be contained in the unbound model.

“Component Performance Model” can mean any model containing the genericperformance characteristics for an Application Component. This can beused to derive the Application Performance Model (which can be containedin the unbound model), by using the specific Business process steps anddata characteristics specified in the Custom Model together withconstraints specified in the Application Constraints Model.

“Custom Model” means a customized general model of a business process toreflect specific business requirements.

“Deployed Model” means a bound model with the binding information forthe management services running in the system.

“Candidate Grounded Model” can be an intermediate model that may begenerated by a tool as it transforms the Unbound Model into the GroundedModel.

“Grounded Component” can contain the installation and configurationinformation for both Grounded Execution Components and GroundedExecution Services, as well as information about policies and start/stopdependencies.

“Grounded Execution Component” can be a representation in the GroundedModel of a (worker) process, thread or servlet that executes anApplication Component.

“Grounded Execution Service” is a representation in the Grounded Modelof the entity that manages the execution of execution components such asWork Processes, servlets or database processes.

“Infrastructure Capability Model” can be a catalogue of resources thatcan be configured by the utility such as different computer types anddevices such as firewalls and load balancers.

MIF (Model Information Flow) is a collection of models used to manage abusiness process through its entire lifecycle.

The present invention can be applied to many areas, the embodimentsdescribed in detail can only cover some of those areas. It can encompassmodeling dynamic or static systems, such as enterprise managementsystems, networked information technology systems, utility computingsystems, systems for managing complex systems such as telecommunicationsnetworks, cellular networks, electric power grids, biological systems,medical systems, weather forecasting systems, financial analysissystems, search engines, and so on. The details modelled will generallydepend on the use or purpose of the model. So a model of a computersystem may represent components such as servers, processors, memory,network links, disks, each of which has associated attributes such asprocessor speed, storage capacity, disk response time and so on.Relationships between components, such as containment, connectivity, andso on can also be represented.

An object-oriented paradigm can be used, in which the system componentsare modeled using objects, and relationships between components of thesystem are modeled either as attributes of an object, or objectsthemselves. Other paradigms can be used, in which the model focuses onwhat the system does rather than how it operates, or describes how thesystem operates. A database paradigm may specify entities andrelationships. Formal languages for system modelling include text basedDMTF Common InformationModel (CIM), Varilog, NS, C++, C, SQL, orgraphically expressed based schemes.

FIGS. 16 and 17 a First Embodiment

FIGS. 16 and 17 show a first embodiment. FIG. 16 shows an overview of asystem for generating a model of an existing business process. Thebusiness process runs on computing infrastructure 950, and has sourcecode 910, typically stored elsewhere. There is source code specifyingthe functional steps of the business process and source code of softwareentities implementing the functional steps. Annotations 920 are added tothe source code. A collector 930 collects the modelling information fromthe annotations. A modeller 940 is provided for generating parts of themodel 960 from the information collected. The model can have modelledfunctional steps, and modelled software entities 980.

FIG. 17 shows steps of the system of FIG. 16 according to an embodimentof the invention. Information from annotations in source content iscollected at step 900. At step 903 the system generates representationsof functional steps of the business process from the collectedinformation, for the model. This enables the system to generaterepresentations of software entities for implementing the functionalsteps, for the model, from the collected information at step 907. Theseare incorporated into the model at step 913. Steps 903 and 907 could becarried out in the reverse order.

Additional Features

Some examples of additional features for dependent claims are asfollows:

The modeller can be arranged to generate for the model a representationof demands on computing infrastructure by the software entities. This isuseful to enable a richer model which can be used in reconfiguring thecomputing infrastructure to meet the demands more efficiently, or topredict alterations in such demands when reconfiguring the businessprocess or the software entities for example.

At least some of the annotations can be descriptive annotations havingstatically determinable information identifying the functional steps andsoftware entities for implementing the functional steps, and thecollector can be arranged to read the source content to collect theinformation. This can enable the modeller to model some of the structureof software entities, other than behavioural information such as demandson computing infrastructure which depend on state or usage patterns forexample.

The descriptive annotations can use types of entities and types ofrelationships where the types correspond to types used in the model.This means the descriptions by the descriptive annotations are orientedfrom the perspective of the model. This can help enable the modeller togenerate parts of the model more efficiently. This approach can provideconsistency which is particularly useful where the source content is inmore than one format.

At least some of the annotations can be monitoring annotations arrangedto specify instrumentation points that modify the run-time behaviour ofthe business process to generate information relating to run-timebehaviour, and the collector can be arranged such that at least some ofthe information collected by the collector is the information relatingto run-time behaviour. This can enable richer models to be generated.Not all relationships between business processes and software entitiesmay be known statically and so some can be discovered at run time. Forexample the set of functional steps (business process steps) in abusiness process, and their sequence or probability may depend on userbehaviour or the state of the system. The use of monitoring annotationsfor discovering the behaviour can enable the richer modelling to becarried out more efficiently and flexibly, as the annotations need notbe restricted to codes or symbols or structures of the language of thesource content.

The modeller can be arranged to use the collected run-time behaviourinformation, to generate a representation of demands on the computinginfrastructure by the software entities. This is particularly usefulinformation to enable more complete models which can help make moreefficient usage of available computing infrastructure.

The modeller can be arranged to correlate the collected information onrun-time behaviour with corresponding representations of softwareentities and functional steps in the model. This can enable the model tobe more complete in modelling behaviour, which can be useful to predictdemands on computing infrastructure for example. The informationgenerated by the monitoring events can be arranged to contain modellingdata contained in the annotations, to help make the correlation easier.

A level of detail of the monitoring of run-time behaviour can beconfigurable. This can enable the monitoring to be focussed on areas ofinterest, which is particularly useful for more complex systems whichcould otherwise generate too much information.

The system can have a documentation generator, arranged to generatehuman readable documentation relating to the functional steps and thesoftware entities for implementing the functional steps, from theinformation collected. This can help enable this important task to becarried out more efficiently. Such documentation can be both on theinformation that can be discovered statically and also informationdiscovered at runtime. For example, it could encompass a report on whatfunctional steps were actually executed and their demands

The model can comprise an unbound model, and a grounded model, themodeller being arranged to generate the unbound model, and the systemfurther having a design service to generate a mapping of logicalcomponents of the unbound model on to computing infrastructure, toprovide a grounded model of the business process, suitable for automateddeployment on the computing infrastructure. This can help exploit someof the advantages of modelling, by providing a way to find a better orbest configuration of the software or the mapping to the computinginfrastructure, to lead to more efficient usage of available resourcesfor live deployments. The mapping could have for example a mapping of alogical infrastructure component used to host a software component, to aspecific type of physical infrastructure. It could be in the form of atemplate, or alternatively the annotations could contain suchinformation. This could be seen as a refinement of the template, or asan additional set of constraints. It is conceivable to have a completetemplate included in the annotations. The unbound model or the groundedmodel can be used to develop and test alternatives to the existingbusiness process in terms of changes to functional steps, software orcomputing infrastructure, rather than risking untested changes to theexisting business process.

The annotations can be in the source content that specifies the businessprocess and the source content of the software entities that implementthat business process. Both can be important if the relationship betweenthe two is relevant, such as where some operators are only interested inthe sequence of business process steps, and others are interested in theunderlying software entities and lower layers.

The service provider could offer to deploy on dedicated hardware localto the enterprise, and yet provide ongoing management by a serviceprovider. Reference is made to above referenced copending applicationnumber 200702144 for more details of examples of this. This can increasecomplexity for the service provider, in which case, the advantages ofusing annotations as described can become all the more valuable.

Where a 3-D visual interface is provided with a game server to enablemultiple developers to work on the same model and see each otherschanges, developers can navigate complex models more quickly. Referenceis made to above referenced copending application number 200702356 formore details of examples of this. As the complexity increases, again theadvantages of using annotations as described can become all the morevaluable.

Where an enterprise interface is provided to enable the enterprise tocustomise the non functional requirements independently of each other,then the service provider may be faced with more complex developmenteffort to meet the customised requirements. Reference is made to abovereferenced copending application number 200702363 for more details ofexamples of this. Combining this with the use of annotations asdescribed can assist developers in documentation and model generationand help deal with the more complex development effort.

Where the operation of the business process can be simulated or wheremultiple test deployments can be made in parallel, development can beaccelerated. Reference is made to above referenced copending applicationnumber 200702377 for more details of examples of this. Combining thiswith the use of annotations as described can assist developers andenable the advantages of both to be enhanced.

Setting up of a development environment can be facilitated by providinga predetermined mapping of which tools are appropriate for a givendevelopment purpose and given part of the model, or by including modelsof tools to be deployed with the model. Reference is made to abovereferenced copending application numbers 200702145, and 200702601 formore details of examples of this. Combining this with the use ofannotations as described can assist developers further and so enable theadvantages of both to be enhanced.

Model Based Approach

In the embodiments described, annotations are used in various modelbased approaches. A general aim of these model based approaches is toenable development and management of the business process to providematched changes to three main layers: the functional steps of theprocess, the applications used to implement the functional steps of theprocess, and configuration of the computing infrastructure used by theapplications. Such changes are to be carried out automatically by use ofappropriate software tools interacting with models modelling the abovementioned parts. Until now there has not been any attempt to linktogether tools that integrate business process, application andinfrastructure management through the entire system lifecycle.

A model-based approach for management of such complex computer basedprocesses will be described. Such models can have structured data modelsin CIM/UML to model the following three layers:

-   -   Infrastructure elements, such as physical machines, VMs, network        links.    -   Application elements, such as Databases, application servers.    -   Business level elements, such as functional steps of business        processes running in the application servers.

A model is an organized collection of elements modelled in UML forexample. A goal of some embodiments is to use these data models for theautomated on-demand provision of enterprise applications following aSoftware as a service (SaaS) paradigm.

Problem Statement

The design of the hardware infrastructure and software landscape forlarge business processes such as enterprise applications is an extremelycomplex task, requiring human experts to design the software andhardware landscape. Once the enterprise application has been deployed,there is an ongoing requirement to modify the hardware and softwarelandscape in response to changing workloads and requirements. Thismanual design task is costly, time-consuming, error-prone, andunresponsive to fast-changing workloads, functional requirements, andnon-functional requirements. The embodiments describe mechanisms toautomatically create an optimised design for an enterprise application,monitor the running deployed system, and dynamically modify the designto best meet the non-functional requirements. There are two basic inputsto the design process:

-   -   Specification of functional requirements. Typically, this is in        the form of a set of business steps that the application is to        support. These describe what the system is intended to do from        the perspective of end users. The specification will specify the        set of standard business steps required from a standard        catalogue, and any system-specific customisations of these        steps. This specification will determine the set of products and        optional components that must be included in the design of a        suitable software landscape for the enterprise application.    -   Specification of non-functional requirements. This defines the        requirements that the design must meet, such as performance,        security, reliability, cost, and maintainability. Examples of        performance could include the total and concurrent number of        users to be supported, transaction throughput, or response        times.

The design process involves the creation of a specification of thehardware and software landscape of the enterprise application that willmeet the functional and non-functional requirements described above.This can consist of:

-   -   A set of physical hardware resources, selected from an available        pool. The infrastructure would consist of computers, memory,        disks, networks, storage, and other appliances such as        firewalls.    -   A virtual infrastructure to be deployed onto the physical        resources, together with an assigned mapping of virtual        infrastructure to physical infrastructure. The virtual        infrastructure must be configured in such a way to best take        advantage of the physical infrastructure and support the        requirements of the software running on it. For example, the        amount of virtual memory or priority assigned to a virtual        machine.    -   A selection of appropriately configured software components and        services, distributed across the virtual and physical        infrastructure. The software must be configured to meet the        system specific functional requirements, such as customisations        of standard business processes. Additionally, the software must        be configured to best make use of the infrastructure it is        deployed on, while meeting both the functional and        non-functional requirements. Configuration parameters could        include the level of threading in a database, the set of        internal processes started in an application server, or the        amount of memory reserved for use by various internal operations        of an application server.

Using Model-Based technologies to automatically design and manageEnterprise applications can offer powerful predictive power, and thecapability to automatically design, deploy, modify, monitor, and managea running system to implement a business process, while minimizing therequirement for human involvement.

The Enterprise application can be modelled at 4 interconnected layers:

-   -   Physical Infrastructure    -   Virtual Infrastructure    -   Software Landscape, corresponding to software entities such as        the above mentioned application elements    -   Business Processes

This model is called the Enterprise application Model. At each layer, itconsists of two sets of models—the Automation Models and the DocumentModels.

-   -   The Automation Models describe the structure and behaviour of        the System, and are used to automatically generate, evaluate,        deploy, and modify designs for Enterprise applications.        Monitored data from the deployed physical system at each of the        4 layers can be correlated with modelled behaviour and used to        make run-time management decisions based on actual measurements.

The Automation Models consist of those models described in the MIF(Business Process Model, Custom Model, Unbound Model, Grounded Model,Bound Model, and Deployed Model), that enable the automation of theEnterprise application through its entire lifecycle from design todeployment.

In general, an Automation Model is composed of two categories ofsub-models—the Static Model and Operational Model. The Static Modeldescribes the static structure of the system—the selection andconfiguration options of candidate designs of the Enterpriseapplication. The Operational Model describes the internal structure,run-time operation, and performance demands (such as CPU, memory, disk,or network I/O) of the infrastructure and software. It is theseOperational Models that allow simulation and evaluation of how well acandidate design will meet the non-functional requirements of theSystem.

-   -   The Document Model contains information that can be extracted        and transformed into a valuable source of documentation of the        System. The information that contributes to the Document Model        may be closely associated with entities in the Automation Model.        This documentation can be used by humans to understand and        inspect the structure and operational behaviour of the system,        both for functional correctness but also for non-functional        behaviour such as performance. The documentation may also be        used for training and educational purposes. Examples of        documentation include:    -   UML diagrams of Business Process steps.    -   Descriptions of the function of Business Objects, their        interfaces, and side effects.    -   UML diagrams of internal static structure of Software        Applications, in terms of the constituent software components.    -   Activity diagrams of the interactions between software        components.

The output from Monitoring and Reporting Services could also beclassified as a special case of the Document Model, describing therun-time behaviour and performance of the system in human-readable form.Enterprise applications are very complex, and the Models underlying themodelling techniques are correspondingly complex and difficult tocreate. The Models may change over time as systems are modified, patchedand redesigned. Additionally, the models may depend on the actual dataand configuration contained within a specific System and the observedbehaviour of a running system.

In general, much of the detailed structure and parameters of therequired models are too complex and dynamic for human beings to generateby hand in a timely fashion. The problem addressed by this invention ishow to automatically generate, at least parts of, the Automation andDocument Models. The information in the models must be consistent andcorrelated—activity in one part of the system must be traceable andcorrelated with related activities. For example, an activity A mayresult in a cascade of other activities B, C and D; it is desirable thatthese relationships can be represented at run-time and captured in themodels.

Model-Based technologies to automatically design and manage Enterpriseapplications—see “Adaptive Infrastructure meets Adaptive Applications”,by Brand et al, published as an external HP Labs Tech Report:http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-138.html andincorporated herein by reference, can provide the capability toautomatically design, deploy, modify, monitor, and manage a runningSystem to implement a business process, while minimizing the requirementfor human involvement.

The embodiments are concerned with providing a mechanism toautomatically generate key aspects of the required Automation Models ofan Enterprise application, together with additional Document Models tobe used by humans to understand and analyse the system. The embodimentsdescribe adding consistent and correlated annotations, Model Mark-up, tothe various forms of Source Content for the software of an EnterpriseApplication. The annotations can describe the structure of the systemfrom the perspective of the models that are to be generated. The modelsand annotations can share the same concepts, such as Business Process,Business Process Steps, Business Object, and Software Component.Instances of those concept types are described in the annotations,together with the relationships between them. Information isautomatically captured from the annotations to create or supplement therequired models, using a combination of both static analysis andrun-time discovery.

Source Content

The software of an Enterprise Application can be described by variouskinds of Source Content. Typically the Source Content is owned by theEnterprise Application Vendor, who would also be responsible for addingthe Model-Markup annotations. There may be several forms of SourceContent such as:

-   -   Program Code written in languages such as Java, or ABAP. This        code may be created directly by humans, or automatically        generated from other Program Models or tools.    -   Program Models describe an aspect of the system, such as its        static structure, or run-time behaviour. Program Models are        themselves expressed in some form of mark-up language, such as        XML. Examples might be:    -   State and Action diagrams for the behaviour of software        components.    -   Business Process diagrams describing the set of business process        steps.    -   Structure diagrams describing the static packaging of the        software into deployable units, executables and products.

Program Code or Program Models may be generated via tools, such asgraphical editors, or directly by humans. The syntax and language usedto describe Source Content may vary widely. However the Model Mark-upadded as annotations to the Source Content, should have consistentsemantics, concepts, and identifiers so the various parts of the systemcan be correlated and analysed. Despite the single conceptual model, thesyntactic mechanisms used to add the Model Mark-up would necessarilyvary, to be compatible with each of the forms of Source Content.

FIG. 18, Static Analysis

FIG. 18 shows an embodiment of the invention involving static analysis.This figure shows the Source Content of the Enterprise Application,annotated with Model-Markup, and the use of a set ofModel-Transformation Tools to generate at least parts of the DocumentModel, Automation Model, and Executable Code and Data, from a staticanalysis of the annotations.

This figure shows source content A B and C, and correspondingannotations in the form of model mark up A, B and C. In the staticanalysis, a set of tools shown as model transformation tools, canextract and transform the Model Mark-up in the Source Content intoelements of the Automation and Document Models. For example, this cancapture the set of Business Processes and Business Steps in a system,and any statically known invocation relationships between them.

Annotation would be used to add information to various parts of themodels in the MIF during static analysis. In particular, the annotationdescribes information that forms parts of the Unbound Model. Someexamples of the use of annotation during static analysis are now given,but should not be considered exhaustive and simply illustrative of theprinciples.

Annotation in the source content of business processes would describethe business processes and business process steps in the terms of theconcepts used by the Business and Custom Models—the set of businessprocesses, how they are composed into business process steps, theinvocation relationships between these steps and how the businessprocess steps are implemented as application software components. Therelationships between Business Processes and Business Process steps canbe described statically where they are known by the designer of thebusiness process or business process step. For example that a businessprocess will always make use of a business process step, or that theexecution of one business process step always immediately follows theexecution of another business process step. There may be situationswhere these relationships cannot be described and discovered by staticanalysis, and must be discovered at run-time via the Run-time ModelReporting functionality. For example a business process step may begeneric and able to be used in many business processes, where theexecution of the business process step is conditional on the run-timestate of the system or human actions.

Similarly, annotation in program code or program models would describethe software structure in terms understood by the Application PackagingModel—the other application components an application component dependson, the software module an application component is part of, thesoftware modules an application component depends on, how softwaremodules are packaged into products, and the software service thatexecutes an application component.

A further feature of some embodiments of the invention is to use thesame Model Mark-up for run-time discovery and analysis of the system.This is shown in FIG. 18 as run-time model reporting in the executablecode and data. The Markup defines run-time instrumentation points, andthe model information to be reported at those points.

FIG. 19

FIG. 19 shows schematically run-time generation and modification ofdocumentation and automation models, from run-time model reportingfunctionality. During the static transformation phase, modeltransformation tools caused instances of the Model-Markup to trigger atransformation of the Source Content to supplement the behaviour of thegenerated executable code of the Enterprise Application, such that themodified code reports model information to a Model Discovery service.The modified executable code supplements the execution context of therunning System with model-based structural information derived from theannotations. This additional context captures the run-time behaviour andinteractions between the various parts of the System in terms of theconcepts in the required models. The ran-time monitoring generated fromthe annotation, in some cases with a controllable level of detail, canbe used to refine the model and may cause run-time re-evaluation ofdesign choices and therefore the generation of a new grounded model.

Another feature is to use the annotations to relate the modelledconcepts with measured performance demands placed on the infrastructureby the Software components, so that the resulting models can ultimatelyrelate the Business Processes to infrastructure requirements.

FIG. 19 illustrates model generation at run-time from a deployed System.A sub-set of the Model-Markup results in additional functionality beingadded to the generated Executable Code—Run-time Model Reporting—used tofeed information about the structure and behaviour of the system atrun-time to a Model Discovery Service. The Model Discovery Servicecreates, extends, or modifies both the Automation and DocumentationModels based on the reported information. In turn, any modifications tothe Automation Model may cause the Model-Based Design Service tore-evaluate the generated Grounded Model for the System, and a newGrounded Model submitted for deployment by the Model-based AutomationServices on the available infrastructure. An example of how the modelbased design service, and model based automation services can beimplemented will be described in more detail below with reference toFIGS. 1 to 15. The model discovery service can also be used to generatereports for an operator.

A number of complementary implementation mechanisms are possible for theRun-time Model Reporting functionality, including:

-   -   Modification of Source Content—transformation tools analyze the        Model-Markup and add or modify the Source Content, to an        intermediate form, before it is transformed into the final        Executable Code. The tools would insert additional method calls        in the Program Code to a make use of a software library to        report to the Model Discovery Service. These method calls would        be inserted at the points and with the parameters derived from        the Model-Markup.    -   Modified generation of byte code. Instead of modifying the        Source Content directly, for example by adding additional        function calls, the Model-Markup could be interpreted directly        by the compilation tools that generate object-code or byte-code        (such as Java byte-code); the generated code would be modified        to report information to the Model Discovery Service. The        advantage of this technique is that it may be possible to better        instrument the details of the execution of the running code. For        example to analyse the CPU utilisation, memory consumption (heap        and stack size), or live object references in a Java virtual        machine, and include these performance demands in the reported        information.

For both mechanisms described above for the Run-time Model Reportingfunctionality, the Model-Markup explicitly triggers modification of theSource Content or byte code at a specific point in the Source Code.Additionally, the transformation tools may analyse the Source Contentdirectly, for example to put wrappers or traps around significantcollections of method calls, such as a specific source file; in thiscase, the Model-Markup may simply modify this process, for example byspecifying the level-of-detail, or naming specific parameters forspecial reporting treatment.

A feature of some embodiments of the invention is that thelevel-of-detail or sub-set of information gathered and reported from thegenerated Run-time Model Reporting is configurable, either statically atgeneration time or dynamically at run-time. For example level-of-detailfor reporting could be for:

-   -   A thread that executes within an Application Server.    -   Specific methods of a business object.    -   All uses of a business object.    -   A functional unit (collection of related business objects and        business processes).    -   A specific Enterprise Application such as a Database or        Application Server.

The information gathered could be targeted or presented according toviews/properties of the architecture or person interested in theinformation. For example:

-   -   Switch on model monitoring for only a specific module such as        Sales and Distribution.    -   Generate correlated run-time performance demands for a specified        collection of Business Objects, software components, and virtual        machines.

Another feature of some embodiments of the invention is to also use theannotations to relate the modelled concepts with measured performancedemands placed on the infrastructure by the Software components, so thatthe resulting models can ultimately relate the Business Processes toinfrastructure requirements. This is achieved by supplementing theexecution context captured from information in the Markup withinformation derived from run-time monitoring of the system. For example,the Model-Markup would denote the start and end of a Business ProcessStep. It would be possible to associate the measured demands on the partof the system that is executing that step with the step itself (e.g.CPU, memory, network I/O) and with the details of the virtual/physicalinfrastructure, and incorporate this into the generated models to makefuture performance predictions.

Annotation would be used to provide input to various parts of the modelsin the MW during runtime discovery analysis. In particular, theannotation describes information that will form parts of the UnboundModel.

Annotation for Run-time Model Reporting in the source content ofbusiness processes allow relationships between business processes andbusiness process steps to be discovered at run-time, where theserelationships are not known to the designer of the business processes.For example a business process step may be generic and able to be usedin many business processes or the execution of the business process stepis conditional on run-time state of the system or human actions, andtherefore may be used in business processes that were not predicted bythe designer of the business process step. The information about thesediscovered relationships extend and supplement the Business and CustomModels. Examples are now given of how the Business and Custom Modelscould be extended and supplemented. These examples should not beconsidered to be exhaustive, but simply illustrative of the principle.The set of business processes actually used by an organisation, theactual set of business process steps used within that business process,and the invocation ordering between these steps can be discovered atrun-time from actual use within the organisation. The detailedinvocation relationships between business processes that form part ofthe Custom Model can be measured, leading to more accurate prediction ofthe future load on the system based on real user behaviour. For examplethe actual branching probabilities between business process steps, asusers make decisions as they progress through the business process, canbe substituted into the Custom Model. Similarly, annotation for Run-timeModel Reporting in program code or program models would allow discoveryof information and relationships used to extend and supplement therepresentation of the software structure and performance in termsunderstood by the Custom Model, Application Packaging Model andApplication Performance Model, as shown in FIG. 12 and described in moredetail below. This is important because this information depends on thereal usage of the system in a specific organisation and is difficult togeneralise across all organisations. Some examples will now be given,but these examples should not be considered to be exhaustive, simplyillustrative of the principles. In the Custom Model, the Run-time ModelReporting would allow the AI_BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping mappingrelationship shown in FIG. 11 between a BPStep and an ApplicationComponent to be refined to reflect the real world usage of theApplication Component. In the Application Packaging Model, the Run-timeModel Reporting would allow the dependency relationships betweenapplication components to be refined from discovered actual usage, suchas the set of other application components an application componentdepends on. In the Application Performance Model described below withreference to FIG. 12, the Run-time Model Reporting would allow theinvocation relationships between application components and the resourcedemands to be refined. For example the resource demands such as CPU,memory, network I/O, or disk I/O measured from the monitoringinfrastructure would be correlated with the call chain of invocationrelationships between Business Process Steps and application componentsdiscovered from the Run-time Model Reporting to refine theAI_IndirectComponentResourceDemands andAI_DirectComponentResourceDemands in the Application Performance Model.Additionally, the representation of the call graph between applicationcomponents in the Application Performance Model could be updated fromthe discovered information.

FIG. 20,

This shows steps carried out by a system according to an embodiment. Atstep 917, the preliminary step of adding annotation to source content ofbusiness process functional steps and software entities to identifyentities and relationships is shown. This is typically done manually,though it is conceivable to have software to guide the operator andlimit the types of annotations to ensure they are consistent and matchthe layered structure of the model. The same applies to step 923, thepreliminary step of adding monitoring annotation to source content tomonitor behaviour. This alters the run time behaviour to generatemonitoring events. Examples of this are discussed above. The system canthen do the static analysis of deriving a structure of entities andrelationships from descriptive annotations, by analysing the sourcecontent at step 927. This can be done before or possibly after the runtime analysis, as shown at steps 930 to 941. The business process orrelevant parts of it, are carried out at step 930. The information onbehaviour is collected at step 933, and processed at step 937 tocorrelate the behaviour to modelled entities. Further processing todeduce invocation relationships and demands by given entities oncomputing infrastructure is carried out at step 941. Step 943 showsincorporating the discovered relationships and demands into an unboundmodel of the business process.

FIG. 21

This figure shows steps carried out by a system according to anembodiment, and showing more details of an example of the run timeanalysis. The source content with annotations is compiled intoexecutable code at step 947 and loaded onto a target machine. At runtime, monitoring annotations pass a reference to a shared model contextas a parameter at step 951. The Model Context is a shared repository tostore and capture information reported by the Run-time Model Reportingduring a related sequence of interactions between modelled entities, andidentifies a related set of events from the Run-time Model Reporting fora call chain of related interactions of software components. The ModelContext could for example be located within the Model InformationCollector. The Model Context can store all of the reported model eventsfor a related set of interactions, such as the call graph betweenapplication components resulting from the execution of a businessprocess step in a business process. A reference to the Model Context ispassed between applications components to maintain the identifier forthe related event sequence. This information includes the details of thebusiness process currently executing, the call chain of business processsteps, and the invocation relationships between the applicationcomponents that implement them. As execution passes from one applicationcomponent to another, information can be added to the generated Run-timeModel Reporting events sent to the Model Context about the details ofthe execution environment of that component—for example, the softwareexecution service executing that component, the host Operating System,and the details of the host hardware. The information in the ModelContext can additionally be supplemented with information from othersources that has been correlated with the information discovered fromthe Run-time Model Reporting. For example information from a monitoringsub-system for resource utilisation measured on the computinginfrastructure such as CPU, memory, or disk I/O, could be added to theModel Context for the correlated set of application componentinteractions. Events are reported to the model context according tospecified level of detail, e.g. amount of cpu/memory/bandwith consumedby each stage in call chain at step 953. Behaviour such as events andperformance are correlated to modelled entities at step 957. Then themodel discovery service can analyse the model context to record theexecution of the business process in terms of reported and correlatedevents and performance metrics, as shown by step 961. At step 963, toolscan use the model context to derive parts of the unbound model such asapplication performance model, component performance model andcustomised process model. Examples of these parts of the unbound modelwill be discussed below in more detail with reference to FIG. 4 andother figures.

FIG. 22

FIG. 22 shows steps carried out by a system according to anotherembodiment, and showing more details of monitoring annotations. In thiscase, the monitoring annotations are arranged to alter the run timebehaviour so as to report a time of events, which can help enableperformance to be assessed and modelled more accurately. First themonitoring annotation reports a timestamp of a given event to modeldiscovery service with identity of entities involved at step 971. Thentraffic load on computing infrastructure can be measured at given placeand time at step 973. At step 981, a representation of thesemeasurements or of a derivation of performance from these measurements,is added to the model context associated with the given entities.

Outline of Possible Implementation Techniques

Examples will now be given of the kind of annotation that could beadded. The examples are not meant to be complete or imply there is onlyone way of implementing the mechanism—they are simply illustrative ofthe principles. The annotations are shown in a pseudo XML format. Theactual syntax used may be different, to better match the specifics of aparticular Source Content type.

The principle is to identify, in the Source Code, instances of thevarious concepts that will appear in the generated Models of the systemthat the Source Content implements. For example, Business Process,Business Object, method call, etc. For each annotation instance, thedetails of that concept instance are given as a set of key-value pairs.Some examples of model concepts are given.

The meta-data associated with a Business Process could be located eitherin a separate Model-Markup file or embedded in a Source Content filethat describes the process. Only one instance would exist for eachBusiness Process. An example could be:

<BusinessProcess> <name=”Sales and Distribution”> <id=fah9597wg86> //Unique ID for BusinessProcess <description=”This is a description of myBusiness Process”> // What does it do <levelOfDetail=high> // Detail ofdiscovery and reporting </BusinessProcess>

Example 1 Annotation of Business Process for Sales and Distribution

The ID field allows other annotation instances to uniquely refer to it.Several mechanisms are possible to associate the Source Content thatdefines the Business Process with the Business Process annotation. Atypical use case might be that a complete Source Content File,describing the process, is tagged with the ID of the process and anyresulting code for the process contains the BusinessProcess in itsexecution context. Alternatively, the tag is associated with only asub-section of the Source Content file, and only the functionalitygenerated from within that section adds the Business Process to thecontext passed down the invocation chain.

A Business Process is made up of the invocation of one or more relatedBusiness Process Steps. These Business Process Steps are semanticallymeaningful units of functionality that can be reused in more than oneBusiness Process. The step itself is described in a BusinessProcessStepstructure, which like the BusinessProcess, could be embedded in a SourceContent file for the step, or be located in a separate mark-up file.Each instance of a Business Process Step annotation would itself have aunique ID.

<BusinessProcesStep> <name=”Create Sales Order”> <id=3f87wwoqofo8f8> //ID of the BP step <bpid= fah9597wg86> // Reference to specific BusinessProcess 1 (known statically) <bpid= d3i8ffisfug83> // Reference tospecific Business Process 2 (known statically) <description=”Descriptionof this step” <levelOfDetail=high> // Detail of discovery and reporting</BusinessProcessStep>

Example 2 Annotation of Business Process Step

When the relationship between Business Processes and Business ProcessSteps is known statically by the designers of the business processes,the relationships can be captured explicitly in the annotation. Thereare two possible, complementary, mechanisms that would allow tools toeasily discover the invocation relationships with a simple staticanalysis:

-   -   The Business Process Step annotation may refer explicitly to the        set of Business Processes of which it is a part—this is        represented in the set of bpid attributes in Example 2. This        would be used when there is a definite intent, by the designer,        for the step to be used at least by the specified processes.    -   Explicit annotation could be added to the Source Content        defining the Business Process to mark the invocation points of a        Business Process Step—a BusinessProcessStepinvocation annotation        would be used for this, simply specifying the ID of the Business        Process Step.        These static annotations do not constrain the use of the Step—if        the Step is reusable in many Business Processes, these        additional uses would be discovered at run-time by looking at        the Business Process Identifier passed down in the context from        the invocation in the Business Process. Additionally, the        intended use of the steps specified statically in the        annotations can be verified at run-time.

The Source Content that results in the implementation of a BusinessProcess Step would contain annotations that describe the behaviour ofthe step in more detail. These additional annotations within the SourceContent describe meaningful operations, or points, within the step, suchas start, stop, or external interaction with a third-party system.

<BusinessProcesStepOperation> <id=3f87wwoqofo8f8> // ID of the BP step<operation=start> // Start of the business process step<description=”Description of this step operation” <levelOfDetail=high>// Detail of discovery and reporting </BusinessProcessStepOperation>

Example 3 Annotation of Business Process Step Operation within aBusiness Process Step

The implementation of business functionality, in the form of BusinessObjects (BO) would be described in similar way. There would be a singleannotation instance for each type of BO.

<BusinessObject> <name=”Sales Order”> <id=yfgf6i7if99hf4d> // Unique IDof the type of BO <description=”Description of this Business Object”<levelOfDetail=high> // Detail of discovery and reporting </BusinessObject >

Example 4 Annotation of Business Object

Within the implementation of a Business Object, each externally visiblemethod would also be annotated. The methods would make reference to thetype of Business Object.

<BusinessObjectMethod> <name=”Create Sales Order”> <id=5y34lkudhl326236>// Unique ID of the Method <id=yfgf6i7if99hf4d> // Reference to ID of BOtype <description=”Description of this Business Object Method”<levelOfDetail=medium> // Detail of discovery and reporting </BusinessObjectMethod >

Example 5 Annotation of Methods of a Business Object

At run-time a context, the Model Context, would be maintained to collectdata from the various annotations to build a picture of the execution ofthe application. This context would be organised using the structuresdefined in the Annotation definitions—a set of structured key-valuepairs. A reference to the context would be passed as a parameter downthe call chain of the generated code, even across machine boundaries.The context itself may be located in a central repository or service,such as the Model Discovery Service. The tools that interpreted theModel-Markup would need to process the Source Content to extend themethod signatures of all generated code to reference this sharedcontext. The modified source content would be responsible forappropriately adding or removing data in the Model Context.

-   -   method_foo( . . . )->method_foo( . . . , Model_Context        contextReference)

Example 6 Transformation of Program Code to Pass a Reference to ModelContext

The Model Context may contain information not only about the software,but also about the infrastructure it is running on. Theinfrastructure-related data would include not only the infrastructurethat the current call context is miming on, but also the collection ofdistributed infrastructure that has been involved in the call chain—forexample, that the code is running on a Linux virtual machine, on aspecific physical machine. Additionally, the execution environment andmonitoring infrastructure could supplement the context with informationsuch as amount of CPU/memory/bandwidth consumed by each of the steps andmachines in the call chain.

For each reported event from the Run-time Model Reporting functionality,tools could look into the Model Context to discover the structure andrun-time behaviour from the perspective of the models—for example whichApplication Module, Business Process, Business Process Step, BusinessObject, Business Object Method, etc is involved. The monitoredinformation such as CPU or memory usage produced by the executionenvironment is also associated with this.

The notion of adding mark-up to the Source Content of software, todirect a transformation that generates either code or documentation, canbe implemented using known techniques. An example of document productionis the HTML output from Javadoc mark-up embedded in the comments of aJava source file. An example of mark-up affecting the generation of codeis the directives embedded in Java classes in the Eclipse ModellingFramework (EMF), which affect the generation of automatically-producedcode for model classes for functionality such as instance creation andpersistence.

The known model based systems do not try to auto-generate models, orprovide the kind of framework for managing relationships as shown in thedescribed embodiments.

Nor do the known systems show that the annotation can drive both staticand run-time discovery and analysis of the existing Enterprise businessprocess, to automatically and simultaneously create both a documentationmodel and a computational model of the system. The resultingcomputational model can be used to automate the simulation, evaluation,and design of the system.

More details of an example of using a series of models for such purposeswill now be described. If starting from scratch, a business process isdesigned using a business process modeling tool. The business process isselected from a catalog of available business processes and iscustomized by the business process modeling tool. An available businessprocess is one that can be built and run. There will be correspondingtemplates for these as described below. Then non-functionalcharacteristics such as reliability and performance requirements arespecified.

Next the software entities such as products and components required toimplement the business process are selected. This is done typically bysearching through a catalog of product models in which the model foreach product specifies what business process is implemented. This modelis provided by an application expert or the product vendor.

Next the computing infrastructure such as virtual machines, operatingsystems, and underlying hardware, is designed. This can use templates asdescribed in more detail below, and in above referenced previously filedapplication Ser. No. 11/741,878 “Using templates in automatedmodel-based system design” incorporated herein by reference. A templateis a model that has parameters and options, by filling in the parametersand selecting options a design tool transforms the template into acomplete model of a deployable system. This application shows a methodof modelling a business process having a number of computer implementedsteps using software application components, to enable automaticdeployment on a computing infrastructure, the method having the stepsof:

automatically deriving a grounded model of the business process from anunbound model of the business process, the unbound model specifying theapplication components to be used for each of the computer implementedsteps of the business process, without a complete design of thecomputing infrastructure, and the grounded model specifying a completedesign of the computing infrastructure suitable for automatic deploymentof the business process,the deriving of the grounded model having the steps of providing aninfrastructure design template having predetermined parts of thecomputing infrastructure, predetermined relationships between the parts,and having a limited number of options to be completed, generating acandidate grounded model by generating a completed candidateinfrastructure design based on the infrastructure design template, andgenerating a candidate configuration of the software applicationcomponents used by the unbound model, and evaluating the candidategrounded model, to determine if it can be used as the grounded model.

Next the physical resources from the shared resource pool in the datacenter are identified and allocated. Finally the physical resources areconfigured and deployed and ongoing management of the system can becarried out.

All of this can use SAP R/3 as an example, but is also applicable toother SAP or non-SAP systems. Templates as discussed below can includenot only the components needed to implement the business process and themanagement components required to manage that business process, but alsodesigns for computing infrastructure.

The model generation part can be implemented in various ways. One way isbased on a six stage model flow called the Model Information Flow (MIF).This involves the model being developed in stages or phases whichcapture the lifecycle of the process from business requirements all theway to a complete running system. The six phases are shown in FIG. 4described below and each has a corresponding type of model which can besummarised as follows:

-   -   General Model: The starting point, for example a high level        description of business steps based on “out-of-the-box”        functionalities of software packages the user can choose from.    -   Custom Process Model: defined above, and for example a        specialization of the previous model (General Model) with        choices made by the enterprise. This model captures        non-functional requirements such as response time, throughput        and levels of security. Additionally, it can specify        modifications to the generic business processes for the        enterprise.    -   Unbound Model: defined above, and for example an abstract        logical description of the structure and behaviour of a system        capable of running the business process with the requirements as        specified by the enterprise.    -   Grounded Model: defined above and for example can be a        transformation of the previous model (Unbound Model) to specify        infrastructure choices, such as the quantities and types of        hardware and virtualization techniques to use, and also the        structure and configuration of the software to run the business        process.    -   Bound Model: a grounded model for which resources in the data        centre have been reserved.    -   Deployed Model: a grounded model where the infrastructure and        the software components have been deployed and configured. At        this point, the service is up and running.

Each stage of the flow has corresponding types of model which are storedin a Model Repository. Management services consume the models providedby the Model Repository and execute management actions to realize thetransitions between phases, to generate the next model in the MIF. Thoseservices can be for example:

-   -   Template-based Design Service (TDS) (and an example of a model        based design service): translates non-functional requirements        into design choices for a Grounded Model based on the template.    -   Resource Acquisition Service (RAS): its purpose is to allocate        physical resources prior to the deployment of virtual resources,        such as vms.    -   Resource Configuration Service (RCS): its role is to        create/update the virtual and physical infrastructure.    -   Software Deployment Service (SDS): installs and configures the        applications needed to run the business processes and        potentially other software.    -   Monitoring Services (MS) deploys Probes to monitor behaviour of        a Deployed Model. This can include monitoring at any one or more        of these three levels:        -   Infrastructure: e.g. to monitor CPU, RAM, network I/O usage            regardless of which application or functional step is            executing.        -   Application: e.g. to monitor time taken or CPU consumption            of a given application such as a DB process on the operating            system, regardless of which particular infrastructure            component is used.        -   Business process: e.g. count the number of sales order per            hour, regardless of which infrastructure components or            applications are used.

Templates for the Computing Infrastructure Design

Templates are used to capture designs that are known to instantiatesuccessfully (using the management services mentioned above). An exampleof template describes a SAP module running on a Linux virtual machine(vm) with a certain amount of memory. The templates also capturemanagement operations that it is known can be executed, for instancemigration of vm of a certain kind, increasing the memory of a vm,deploying additional application server to respond to high load, etc. .. . If a change management service refers to the templates, then thetemplates can be used to restrict the types of change (deltas) that canbe applied to the models.

Templates sometimes have been used in specific tools to restrictchoices. Another approach is to use constraints which provide the tooland user more freedom. In this approach constraints or rules arespecified that the solution must satisfy. One example might be thatthere has to be at least one application server and at least onedatabase in the application configuration. These constraints on theirown do not reduce the complexity sufficiently for typical businessprocesses, because if there are few constraints, then there are a largenumber of possible designs (also called a large solution space). Ifthere are a large number of constraints (needed to characterize asolution), then searching and resolving all the constraints is reallyhard—a huge solution space to explore. Also it will take a long time tofind which of the constraints invalidates a given possible design fromthe large list of constraints.

Templates might also contain instructions for managing change. Forexample they can contain reconfiguration instructions that need to beissued to the application components to add a new virtual machine with anew slave application server.

The deriving of the grounded model can involve specifying all serversneeded for the application components. This is part of the design of theadaptive infrastructure and one of the principal determinants ofperformance of the deployed business process. The template may limit thenumber or type of servers, to reduce the number of options, to reducecomplexity of finding an optimised solution for example.

The deriving of the grounded model from the unbound Model can involvespecifying a mapping of each of the application components to a server.This is part of configuring the application components to suit thedesign of adaptive infrastructure. The template may limit the range ofpossible mappings, to reduce the number of options, to reduce complexityfor example.

The deriving of the grounded model can involve specifying aconfiguration of management infrastructure for monitoring of thedeployed business process in use. This monitoring can be at one or moredifferent levels, such as monitoring the software applicationcomponents, or the underlying adaptive infrastructure, such as softwareoperating systems, or processing hardware, storage or communications.

More than one grounded model can be derived, each for deployment of thesame business process at different times. This can enable more efficientuse of resources for business processes which have time varying demandfor those resources for example. Which of the grounded models isdeployed at a given time can be switched over any time duration, such ashourly, daily, nightly, weekly, monthly, seasonally and so on. Theswitching can be at predetermined times, or switching can be arrangedaccording to monitored demand, detected changes in resources such ashardware failures or any other factor.

Where the computing infrastructure has virtualized entities, thederiving of the grounded model can be arranged to specify one or morevirtualized entities without indicating how the virtualised entities arehosted. It has now been appreciated that the models and the deriving ofthem can be simplified by hiding such hosting, since the hosting caninvolve arbitrary recursion, in the sense of a virtual entity beinghosted by another virtual entity, itself hosted by another virtualentity and so on. The template can specify virtual entities, and mapapplication components to such virtual entities, to limit the number ofoptions to be selected, again to reduce complexity. Such templates willbe simpler if they do not need to specify the hosting of the virtualentities. The hosting can be defined at some time before deployment, bya separate resource allocation service for example.

The grounded model can be converted to a bound model, by reservingresources in the adaptive infrastructure for deploying the bound model.At this point, the amount of resources needed is known, so it can bemore efficient to reserve resources at this time than reserving earlier,though other possibilities can be conceived. If the grounded model isfor a change in an existing deployment, the method can have the step ofdetermining differences to the existing deployed model, and reservingonly the additional resources needed.

The bound model can be deployed by installing and starting theapplication components of the bound model. This enables the businessprocess to be used. If the grounded model is for a change in an existingdeployment, the differences to the existing deployed model can bedetermined, and only the additional application components need beinstalled and started.

Two notable points in the modelling philosophy are the use of templatesto present a finite catalogue of resources that can be instantiated, andnot exposing the hosting relationship for virtualized resources. Eitheror both can help reduce the complexity of the models and thus enablemore efficient processing of the models for deployment or changing afterdeployment.

Some embodiments can use an infrastructure capability model to presentthe possible types of resources that can be provided by a computingfabric. An instance of an infrastructure capability model contains oneinstance for each type of Computer System or Device that can be deployedand configured by the underlying utility computing fabric. Each time theutility deploys and configures one of these types, the configurationwill always be the same. For a Computer System this can mean thefollowing for example.

Same memory, CPU, Operating System

Same number of NICs with same I/O capacity

Same number of disks with the same characteristics

The templates can map the application components to computers, while therange of both application components and computers is allowed to vary.In addition the templates can also include some or all of the networkdesign, including for example whether firewalls and subnets separate thecomputers in the solution. In embodiments described below in moredetail, the Application Packaging Model together with the Custom ProcessModel show how the various application components can implement thebusiness process, and are packaged within the Grounded Model.

The template selected can also be used to limit changes to the system,such as changes to the business process, changes to the applicationcomponents, or changes to the infrastructure, or consequential changesfrom any of these. This can make the ongoing management of the adaptiveinfrastructure a more tractable computing problem, and therefore allowmore automation and thus reduced costs. In some example templatescertain properties have a range: for example 0 to n, or 2 to n. A changemanagement tool (or wizard, or set of tools or wizards) only allowschanges to be made to the system that are consistent with template. Thetemplate is used by this change management tool to compute the set ofallowable changes, it only permits allowable changes. This can helpavoid the above mentioned difficulties in computing differences betweenmodels of current and next state, if there are no templates to limit theotherwise almost infinite numbers of possible configurations. Some ofthe advantages or consequences of these features are as follows:

1. Simplicity: by using templates it becomes computationally tractableto build a linked tool set to integrate business process, applicationand infrastructure design and management through the entire lifecycle ofdesign, deployment and change.2. By limiting the number of possible configurations of the adaptiveinfrastructure, the particular computing problem of having to computethe differences between earlier and later states of complex models iseased or avoided. This can help enable a management system for theadaptive infrastructure which can determine automatically how to evolvethe system from an arbitrary existing state to an arbitrary desiredchanged state. Instead templates fix the set of allowable changes andare used as configuration for a change management tool.3. The template models formally relate the business process, applicationcomponents and infrastructure design. This means that designs, orchanges, to any one of these can be made dependent on the others forexample, so that designs or changes which are inconsistent with theothers are avoided.

FIG. 1 Overview

FIG. 1 shows an overview of infrastructure, applications, and managementtools and models according to an embodiment. Adaptive infrastructure 280is coupled typically over the internet to customers 290, optionally viaa business process BP call centre 300. A management system 210 has toolsand services for managing design and deployment and ongoing changes todeployed business processes, using a number of models. For example asshown, the management system has initial design tools 211, design changetools 213, deployment tools 215, and monitoring and management tools217. These may be in the form of software tools running on conventionalprocessing hardware, which may be distributed. Examples of initialdesign tools and design change tools are shown by the servicesillustrated in FIG. 5 described below. A high level schematic view ofsome of the models is shown, for two business processes: there can bemany more. Typically the management system belongs to a service providercontracted to provide IT services to enterprises who control their ownbusiness processes for their customers. A model 230 of business process1 is used to develop a design 250 of software application components.This is used to create and infrastructure design 270 for running theapplication components to implement the business process. This designcan then be deployed by the management system to run on the actualadaptive infrastructure, where it can be used for example by customers,a call centre and suppliers (not shown for clarity). Similarly, item 220shows a model of a second business process, used to develop a design 240of software application components. This is used to create andinfrastructure design 260 for running the application components toimplement the second business process. This design can then also bedeployed by the management system to run on the actual adaptiveinfrastructure.

The management system has an interface, optionally a 3D visualinterface, to an infrastructure management operator 200. This operatorcan be service provider staff, or in some cases can be trained staff ofthe enterprise owning the process. The service provider staff may beable to view and manage the processes of different businesses deployedon the shared infrastructure. The operators of a given enterprise wouldbe able to view and manage only their own processes. As discussed above,the interface can be coupled to the management system 210 to be able tointeract with the various types of models, and with the infrastructuredesign template.

The adaptive infrastructure can include management infrastructure 283,for coupling to the monitoring and management tools 217 of themanagement system. The models need not be held all together in a singlerepository: in principle they can be stored anywhere.

FIG. 2 Operation

FIG. 2 shows a schematic view of some operation steps by an operator andby the management system, according to an embodiment. Human operatoractions are shown in a left hand column, and actions of the managementsystem are shown in the right hand column. At step 500 the humanoperator designs and inputs a business process (BP). At step 510 themanagement system creates an unbound model of the BP. At step 520, theoperator selects a template for the design of the computinginfrastructure. At step 530, the system uses the selected template tocreate a grounded model of the BP from the unbound model and theselected template. In principle the selection of the template might beautomated or guided by the system. The human operator of the serviceprovider then causes the grounded model to be deployed, either as a livebusiness process with real customers, or as a test deployment undercontrolled or simulated conditions. The suitability of the groundedmodel can be evaluated before being deployed as a live business process:an example of how to do this is described below with reference to FIG.3.

At step 550, the system deploys the grounded model of the BP in theadaptive infrastructure. The deployed BP is monitored by a monitoringmeans of any type, and monitoring results are passed to the humanoperator. Following review of the monitoring results at step 570, theoperator of the enterprise can design changes to the BP or the operatorof the service provider can design changes to the infrastructure at step575. These are input to the system, and at step 580 the system decidesif changes are allowed by the same template. If no, at step 585, theoperator decides either for a new template, involving a return to step520, or for a redesign within the limitations of the same template,involving at step 587 the system creating a grounded model of thechanges, based on the same template.

At step 590 the operator of the service provider causes deployment ofthe grounded model for test or live deployment. At step 595 the systemdeploys the grounded model of the changes. In principle the changescould be derived later, by generating a complete grounded model, andlater determining the differences, but this is likely to be moredifficult.

FIG. 3 Operation

FIG. 3 shows an overview of an embodiment showing some of the steps andmodels involved in taking a business process to automated deployment.These steps can be carried out by the management system of FIG. 1, orcan be used in other embodiments.

A business process model 15 has a specification of steps 1-N. There canbe many loops and conditional branches for example as is well known. Itcan be a mixture of human and computer implemented steps, the humaninput being by customers or suppliers or third parties for example. Atstep 65, application components are specified for each of the computerimplemented steps of the business process. At step 75, a complete designof computing infrastructure is specified automatically, based on anunbound model 25. This can involve at step 85 taking an infrastructuredesign template 35, and selecting options allowed by the template tocreate a candidate infrastructure design. This can include design ofsoftware and hardware parts. At step 95, a candidate configuration ofsoftware application components allowed by the template is created, tofit the candidate infrastructure design. Together these form a candidategrounded model.

At step 105, the candidate grounded model is evaluated. If necessary,further candidate grounded models are created and evaluated. Which ofthe candidates is a best fit to the requirements of the business processand the available resources is identified. There are many possible waysof evaluating, and many possible criteria, which can be arranged to suitthe type of business process. The criteria can be incorporated in theunbound model for example.

There can be several grounded models each for different times ordifferent conditions. For example, time varying non-functionalrequirements can lead to different physical resources or even areconfiguration: a VM might have memory removed out-of-office hoursbecause fewer people will be using it. One might even shutdown anunderused slave application server VM. The different grounded modelswould usually but not necessarily come from the same template withdifferent parameters being applied to generate the different groundedmodels.

The template, grounded and subsequent models can contain configurationinformation for management infrastructure and instructions for themanagement infrastructure, for monitoring the business process whendeployed. An example is placing monitors in each newly deployed virtualmachine which raise alarms when the CPU utilization rises above acertain level—e.g. 60%.

FIG. 4 MIF

FIG. 4 shows some of the principal elements of the MIF involved in thetransition from a custom model to a deployed instance. For simplicity,it does not show the many cycles and iterations that would be involvedin a typical application lifecycle—these can be assumed. The generalmodel 15 of the business process is the starting point and it is assumedthat a customer or consultant has designed a customized businessprocess. That can be represented in various ways, so a preliminary stepin many embodiments is customising it. A custom model 18 is acustomization of a general model. So it is likely that a General Modelcould be modelled using techniques similar to the ones demonstrated formodelling the Custom Model: there would be different business processsteps. A custom model differs from the general model in the followingrespects. It will include non-functional requirements such as number ofusers, response time, security and availability requirements. Inaddition it can optionally involve rearranging the business processsteps: new branches, new loops, new steps, different/replacement steps,steps involving legacy or external systems.

The custom model is converted to an unbound model 25 with inputs such asapplication performance 31, application packaging 21, and applicationconstraints 27. The unbound model can specify at least the applicationcomponents to be used for each of the computer implemented steps of thebusiness process, without a complete design of the computinginfrastructure. The unbound model is converted to a grounded model 55with input from models of infrastructure capability 33, and aninfrastructure design template 35.

Deployment of the grounded model can involve conversion to a bound model57, then conversion of the bound model to a deployed model 63. The boundmodel can have resources reserved, and the deployed model involves theapplications being installed and started.

FIG. 5 MIF

FIG. 5 shows a sequence of steps and models according to anotherembodiment. This shows a model repository 310 which can have models suchas templates (TMP), an unbound model (UM), a bound model (BM), apartially deployed model (PDM), a fully deployed model (FDM). The figurealso shows various services such as a service 320 for generating agrounded model from an unbound model using a template. Another serviceis a resource acquisition service 330 for reserving resources using aresources directory 340, to create a bound model.

An adaptive infrastructure management service 350 can configure andignite virtual machines in the adaptive infrastructure 280, according tothe bound model, to create a partially deployed model. Finally asoftware deployment service 360 can be used to take a partially deployedmodel and install and start application components to start the businessprocess, and create a fully deployed model.

FIG. 6 Deriving Grounded Model

FIG. 6 shows steps in deriving a grounded model according to anembodiment. At step 400, a template is selected from examples such ascentralised or decentralised arrangements. A centralised arrangementimplies all is hosted on a single server or virtual server. Othertemplate choices may be for example high or low security, depending forexample on what firewalls or other security features are provided. Othertemplate choices may be for example high or low availability, which canimply redundancy being provided for some or all parts.

At step 410, remaining options in the selected template are filled in.This can involve selecting for example disk sizes, numbers of dialogprocesses, number of servers, server memory, network bandwidth, servermemory, network bandwidth, database time allowed and so on. At step 420,a candidate grounded model is created by the selections. Step 430involves evaluating the candidate grounded model e.g. by building aqueuing network, with resources represented, and with sync pointsrepresenting processing delays, db delays and so on. Alternatively theevaluation can involve deploying the model in an isolated network withsimulated inputs and conditions.

At step 440, the evaluation or simulation results are compared withgoals for the unbound model. These can be performance goals such asmaximum number of simultaneous users with a given response time, ormaximum response time, for a given number of users. At step 450, anothercandidate grounded model can be created and tested with differentoptions allowed by the template. At step 460 the process is repeated forone or more different templates. At step 470, results are compared toidentify which candidate or candidates provides the best fit. More thanone grounded model may be selected, if for example the goals orrequirements are different at different times for example. In this case,the second or subsequent grounded model can be created in the form ofchanges to the first grounded model.

FIG. 7 Master and Slave Application Servers

FIG. 7 shows an arrangement of master and slave application servers fora decentralised or distributed design of computing infrastructure,according to an embodiment. A master application server 50 is providedcoupled by a network to a database 60, and to a number of slaveapplication servers 70. Some of the slaves can be implemented as virtualslave application servers 72. Each slave can have a number of dialogworker processes 80. The master application server is also coupled toremote users using client software 10. These can each have a graphicaluser interface GUI on a desktop PC 20 coupled over the interne forexample. The slaves can be used directly by the clients once the clientshave logged on using the master.

FIG. 8 Master Application Server

FIG. 8 shows parts of a master application server for the embodiment ofFIG. 7, An enqueue process 110 is provided to manage locks on thedatabase. A message server 120 is provided to manage login of users andassignment of users to slave application servers for example. An updateserver 130 is provided for managing committing work to persistentstorage in a database. A print server 140 can be provided if needed. Aspool server 150 can be provided to run batch tasks such as reports. At160 dialog worker processes are shown for running instances of theapplication components.

FIG. 9 Virtual Entities

FIG. 9 shows an arrangement of virtual entities on a server, for use inan embodiment. A hierarchy of virtual entities is shown. At an operatingsystem level there are many virtual machines VM. Some are hosted onother VMs. Some are hosted on virtual partitions VPARs 610 representinga reconfigurable partition of a hardware processing entity, for exampleby time sharing or by parallel processing circuitry. A number of thesemay be hosted by a hard partitioned entity nPAR 620 representing forexample a circuit board mounting a number of the hardware processingentities. Multiple nPARs make up a physical computer 630 which istypically coupled to a network by network interface 650, and coupled tostorage such as via a storage area network SAN interface 640.

There are many commercial storage virtualization products on the marketfrom HP, IBM, EMC and others. These products are focused on managing thestorage available to physical machines and increasing the utilization ofstorage. Virtual machine technology is a known mechanism to runoperating system instances on one physical machine independently ofother operating system instances. It is known, within a single physicalmachine, to have two virtual machines connected by a virtual network onthis machine. VMware is a known example of virtual machine technology,and can provide isolated environments for different operating systeminstances running on the same physical machine.

There are also many levels at which virtualization can occur. Forexample HP's cellular architecture allows a single physical computer tobe divided into a number of hard partitions or nPARs. Each nPAR appearsto the operating system and applications as a separate physical machine.Similarly each nPAR can be divided into a number of virtual parititionsor vPARs and each vPAR can be divided into a number of virtual machines(e.g. HPVM, Xen, VMware).

FIGS. 10 to 15

The next part of this document describes in more detail with referenceto FIGS. 10 to 15 examples of models that can be used within the ModelInformation Flow (MIF) shown in FIGS. 1 to 9, particularly FIG. 4. Thesemodels can be used to manage an SAP application or other businessprocess through its entire lifecycle within a utility infrastructure.The diagrams are shown using the well known UML (Unified ModellingLanguage) that uses a CIM (common information model) style. Theimplementation can be in Java or other software languages.

A custom model can have a 1-1 correspondence between an instance of anAlService and a BusinessProcess. The AIService is the informationservice that implements the business process.

A business process can be decomposed into a number of business processsteps (BPsteps), so instances of a BusinessProcess class can contain 1or more BPSteps. An instance of a BPStep may be broken into multiplesmaller BPSteps involving sequences, branches, recursions and loops forexample. Once the BusinessProcess step is decomposed into sufficientdetail, each of the lowest level BPSteps can be matched to anApplicationComponent. An ApplicationComponent is the program or functionthat implements the BPStep. For SAP, an example would be the SAPtransaction named VA01 in the SD (Sales and Distribution package) of SAPR/3 Enterprise. Another example could be a specific Web Service (runningin an Application Server).

BPStep can have stepType and stepParams fields to describe not onlyexecution and branching concepts like higher-level sequences of steps,but also the steps themselves. The stepType field is used to definesequential or parallel execution, loops, and if-then-else statements.The stepParams field is used to define associated data. For example, inthe case of a loop, the stepParams field can be the loop count or atermination criterion. The set of BPSteps essentially describes a graphof steps with various controls such as loops, if-then-else statements,branching probabilities, etc.

The relation BPStepsToApplicationComponentMapping is a complex mappingthat details how the BPStep is mapped to the ApplicationComponent. Itrepresents, in a condensed form, a potentially complex mix ofinvocations on an Application Component by the BPStep, such as thespecific dialog steps or functions invoked within theApplicationComponent or set of method calls on a Web Service, andprovided details of parameters, such as the average number of line itemsin a sales order.

A BPStep may have a set of non-functional requirements(NonFunctionalRequirements) associated with it: performance;availability, security, and others. Availability and securityrequirements could be modelled by a string: “high”, “medium”, “low”.Performance requirements are specified in terms of for example a numberof registered users (NoUsersReq), numbers of concurrent users of thesystem, the response time in seconds and throughput requirement for thenumber of transactions per second. Many BPSteps may share the same setof non-functional requirements. A time function can be denoted by astring. This specifies when the non-functional requirements apply, sodifferent requirements can apply during office-hours to outside ofnormal office hours. Richer time varying functions are also possible tocapture end of months peaks and the like.

FIGS. 10, 11 Custom Model

For an example of a Custom Model the well-known Sales and Distribution(SD) Benchmark will be discussed. This is software produced by the wellknown German company SAP. It is part of the SAP R/3 system, which is acollection of software that performs standard business functions forcorporations, such as manufacturing, accounting, financial management,and human resources. The SAP R/3 system is a client server system ableto run on virtually any hardware/software platform and able to use manydifferent database management systems. For example it can use an IBMAS/400 server running operating system OS/400 using database system DB2;or a Sun Solaris (a dialect of Unix) using an Oracle database system; oran IBM PC running Windows NT using SQL Server.

SAP R/3 is designed to allow customers to choose their own set ofbusiness functions, and to customize to add new database entities or newfunctionality. The SD Benchmark simulates many concurrent users usingthe SD (Sales and Distribution) application to assess the performancecapabilities of hardware. For each user the interaction consists of 16separate steps (Dialog Steps) that are repeated over and over. The stepsand their mapping to SAP transactions are shown in FIG. 10. Atransaction here is an example of an Application Component. Eachtransaction is shown as a number of boxes in a row. A first box in eachrow represents a user invoking the transaction e.g. by typing /nva01 tostart transaction VA01. As shown in FIG. 10, transaction VA01 in the toprow involves the business process steps of invoking the create salesorder transaction, then filling order details, then saving the sold-toparty, and completing with the “back” function F3 which saves the data.A next transaction VL01N is shown in the second row, and involves stepsas follows to create an outbound delivery. The transaction is invoked,shipping information is filled in, and saved. A next transaction VA03 isshown in the third row for displaying a customer sales order. Thisinvolves invoking the transaction, and filling subsequent documents. Afourth transaction is VL02N in the fourth row, for changing an outbounddelivery. After invoking this transaction, the next box shows saving theoutbound delivery. A next transaction shown in the fifth row is VA05,for listing sales orders. After invoking this transaction, the next boxshows prompting the user to fill in dates and then a third box showslisting sales orders for the given dates. Finally, in a sixth row, thetransaction VF01 is for creating a billing document, and shows filling aform and saving the filled form.

FIG. 11 shows an example of a custom model instance for the SDBenchmark. The two top boxes indicate that the business process“BPModel” contains one top level BPStep: “SD Benchmark”, withstepType=Sequence. Two lines are shown leading from this box, one to thenon-functional requirements associated with this top-level BPStep, andshown by the boxes at the left hand side. In this particular case onlyperformance requirements have been specified—one for 9 am-5 pm and theother for 5 pm-9 am. Other types of non-functional requirements notshown could include security or availability requirements for example.In each case the performance requirements such as number of users,number of concurrent users, response time required, and throughputrequired, can be specified as shown. These are only examples: otherrequirements can be specified to suit the type of business process. Abox representing the respective time function is coupled to eachperformance requirement box as shown. One indicates 9 am to 5 pm, andthe other indicates 5 pm to 9 am in this example.

On the right hand side a line leads from the SD Benchmark BPStep to thefunctional requirements shown as six BPSteps, with stepType=Step—one foreach SAP transaction shown in FIG. 10 (VA01, VL01N, etc). Forconvenience the name of the first dialog step for each transaction shownin FIG. 10 is used as the name of the corresponding BPStep shown in FIG.11 (“Create sales order”, “Create outbound delivery”, “Display customersales order”, “Change outbound delivery”, “List sales order”, and“Create delivery document”). For each of these steps theBPStepToApplicationComponentMapping relation specifies the details ofthe dialog steps involved. For example in the case of CreateSalesOrder,FIG. 10 shows that the BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping needs tospecify the following dialog steps are executed in order: “Create SalesOrder”, “Fill Order Details”, “Sold to Party” and “Back”. In addition itmight specify the number of line items needed for “Fill Order Details”.At the right hand side of the figure, each BP step is coupled to aninstance of its corresponding ApplicationComponent via the respectivemapping. So BPstep “Create Sales order” is coupled toApplicationComponent VA01, via mapping having ID:001. BPstep “Createoutbound delivery” is coupled to ApplicationComponent VL01N via mappinghaving ID:002. BPstep “Display customer sales order” is coupled viamapping having ID:003 to ApplicationComponent VA03. BPstep “Changeoutbound delivery” is coupled via mapping having ID:004 toApplicationComponent VL02N. BPstep “List sales order” is coupled viamapping having ID:005 to ApplicationComponent VA05. BPstep “Createdelivery document” is coupled via mapping having ID:006 toApplicationComponent VF01.

FIG. 12, The Unbound Model

The Unbound Model is used to calculate resource demands. As shown inFIG. 12 this model can be made up of four models: the Custom Model(labelled CustomizedProcessingModel), Application Packaging, ApplicationConstraints and Application Performance models, an example of each ofwhich will be described below (other than the Custom Model, an exampleof which has been described above with respect to FIG. 11). Otherarrangements can be envisaged. No new information is introduced that isnot already contained in these four models.

FIG. 12, Application Packaging Model

The Application Packaging Model describes the internal structure of thesoftware: what products are needed and what modules are required fromthe product. An ApplicationComponent can be contained in anApplicationModule. An ApplicationModule might correspond to a JAR (Javaarchive) file for an application server, or a table in a database. Inthe case of SAP it might be the module to be loaded from a specificproduct into an application server such as SD or Fl (Financials). Theapplication packaging model can have a DiskFootPrint to indicate theamount of disk storage required by the ApplicationModule. In the case ofthe ApplicationComponent VA01 in FIG. 10, it is from SD with aDiskFootPrint of 2 MB for example. One or more ApplicationModules arecontained within a product. So for example SAP R/3 Enterprise containsSD. ApplicationModules can be dependent on other ApplicationModules. Forexample the SD Code for the Application Server depends on both the SDData and the SD Executable code being loaded into the database. Thecustom model can have an ApplicationExecutionComponent for executing anApplicationComponent. This could be a servlet running in an applicationserver or a web server. It could also be a thread of a specificcomponent or a process. In the case of SD's VAO1 transaction it is aDialog Work Process. When it executes, the ApplicationComponent mayindirectly use or invoke other Application-Components to run: a servletmay need to access a database process; SD transactions need to accessother ApplicationComponents such as the Enqueue Work Process and theUpdate Work Process, as well as the DatabaseApplicationExecutionComponent. The ApplicationExecutionComponent can becontained by and executed in the context of anApplicationExecutionService (SAP application server) which loads orcontains ApplicationModules (SD) and manages the execution ofApplicationExecutionComponents (Dialog WP) which, in turn, execute theApplicationComponent (VA01) to deliver a BPStep.

FIG. 12, Application Constraints Model

-   -   The Application Constraints Model expresses arbitrary        constraints on components in the Customized Process, Application        Packaging and Component Performance Models. These constraints        are used by tools to generate additional models as the MIF        progresses from left to right. Examples of constraints include:    -   How to scale up an application server—what        ApplicationExecutionComponents are replicated and what are not.        For example, to scale up an SAP application server to deal with        more users one cannot simply replicate the first instance—the        master application server 50 of FIGS. 7 and 8, commonly known as        the Central Instance. Instead a subset of the components within        the Central Instance is needed. This is also an example of        design practice: there may be other constraints encoding best        design practice.    -   Installation and configuration information for        ApplicationComponents, ApplicationExecutionComponents and        ApplicationExecutionServices    -   Performance constraints on ApplicationExecutionServices—e.g. do        not run an application server on a machine with greater than 60%        CPU utilization

Other examples of constraints include ordering: the database needs to bestarted before the application server. Further constraints might be usedto encode deployment and configuration information. The constraints canbe contained all in the templates, or provided in addition to thetemplates, to further limit the number of options for the groundedmodel.

FIG. 12, Application Performance Model

The purpose of the Application Performance Model is to define theresource demands for each BPStep. There are two types of resource demandto consider.

-   -   1. The demand for resources generated directly by the        ApplicationExecutionComponent (e.g. Dialog WP) using CPU,        storage I/O, network I/O and memory when it executes the        BPStep—the ComponentResourceDemand    -   2. The demand for resources generated by components that the        above ApplicationExecutionComponent causes when it uses, calls        or invokes other components (e.g. a Dialog WP using an Update        WP)—the IndirectComponentResourceDemand

The IndirectComponentResourceDemand is recursive. So there will be atree like a call-graph or activity-graph.

A complete Application Performance Model would contain similarinformation for all the BPSteps shown in FIG. 11. For example the set ofdialog steps in the BPStep “Create Sales Order” might consume 0.2 SAPS.Further it consists of 4 separate invocations (or in SAP terminologyDialog Steps). The calls are synchronous.

The following are some examples of attributes that can appear inIndirectComponentResourceDemands and ComponentResourceDemands.

-   -   delayProperties: Any delay (e.g. wait or sleep) associated with        the component's activity which does not consume any CPU,        NetIOProperties and DiskIOProperties.    -   Numinvocation: The number of times the component is called        during the execution of the BPStep.    -   InvocationType: synchronous if the caller is blocked;        asynchronous if the caller can immediately continue activity.    -   BPStepToAppCompID: This is the ID attribute of the        BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping. The reason for this is that        a particular ApplicationExecutionComponent is likely to be        involved in several different BPSteps.    -   ApplicationEntryPoint: This is the program or function being        executed. In the case of “Create Sales Order” this is VAO1 for        the DialogWP. It could also be a method of a Web Service.

CPUProperties can be expressed in SAPs or in other units. There arevarious ways to express MemProperties, NetIOProperties andDiskIOProperties.

FIG. 12, Component Performance Model

There is one instance of an Application Performance Model for eachinstance of a Custom Model. This is because, in the general case, eachbusiness process will have unique characteristics: a unique ordering ofBPSteps and/or a unique set of data characteristics for each BPStep. TheDirectComponentResourceDemands and IndirectComponentResourceDe-mandsassociations specify the unique resource demands for each BPStep. Thesedemands need to be calculated from known characteristics of eachApplicationComponent derived from benchmarks and also traces ofinstalled systems.

The Component Performance Model contains known performancecharacteristics of each ApplicationComponent. A specific ApplicationPerformance Model is calculated by combining the following:

-   -   The information contained in the        BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping associations in the Custom        Model    -   Any performance related constraints in the Application        Constraints Model    -   The Component Performance Model

Taken together, the models of the Unbound Model specify not only thenon-functional requirements of a system, but also a recipe for how togenerate and evaluate possible software and hardware configurations thatmeet those requirements. The generation of possible hardwareconfigurations is constrained by the choice of infrastructure availablefrom a specific Infrastructure Provider, using information in anInfrastructure Capability Model, and by the selected template.

A general principle that applies to deployable software elementsdescribed in the Unbound Model, such as theApplicationExecutionComponent or ApplicationExecutionService, is thatthe model contains only the minimum number of instances of each type ofelement necessary to describe the structure of the application topology.For example, in the case of SD only a single instance of a Dialog WorkProcess ApplicationExecutionComponent associated with a single instanceof an Application Server ApplicationExecutionService is needed in theUnbound Model to describe the myriad of possible ways of instantiatingthe grounded equivalents of both elements in the Grounded Model. It isthe template and packaging information that determines exactly how theseentities can be replicated and co-located.

The Infrastructure Capability Model

As discussed above, two notable features of the modelling philosophydescribed are:

1. Present a template having a finite catalogue of resources that can beinstantiated, so that there are a fixed and finite number of choices.For example, small-xen-vm 1-disk, medium-xen-vm 2-disk, large-xen-vm3-disk, physical-hpux-machine etc. This makes the selection of resourcetype by any capacity planning tool simpler. It also makes theinfrastructure management easier as there is less complexity in resourceconfiguration—standard templates can be used.2. Do not expose the hosting relationship for virtualized resources. TheDMTF Virtualization System Profile models hosting relationship as a“HostedDependency” association. This does not seem to be required ifthere is only a need to model a finite number of resource types, so itdoes not appear in any of the models discussed here. This keeps themodels simpler since there is no need to deal with arbitrary recursion.It does not mean that tools that process these models can't use the DMTFapproach internally if that is convenient. It may well be convenient fora Resource Directory Service and Resource Assignment Service to use thisrelationship in their internal models.

An instance of an infrastructure capability model contains one instancefor each type of ComputerSystem or Device that can be deployed andconfigured by the underlying utility computing fabric. Each time theutility deploys and configures one of these types the configuration willalways be the same. For a ComputerSystem this means the following.

-   -   Same memory, CPU, Operating System    -   Same number of NICs with same I/O capacity    -   Same number of disks with the same characteristics

FIG. 13 Template Example

FIG. 13 shows an example of an infrastructure design template havingpredetermined parts of the computing infrastructure, predeterminedrelationships between the parts, and having a limited number of optionsto be completed. In this case it is suitable for a decentralised SDbusiness process, without security or availability features. The figureshows three computer systems coupled by a network labelled “AI network”,the right hand of the three systems corresponding to a masterapplication server, and the central one corresponds to slave applicationservers as shown in FIG. 7. Hence it is decentralized. AI is anabbreviation of Adaptive Infrastructure. The left hand one of thecomputer systems is for a database. The type of each computer system isspecified, in this case as a BL20/Xen. The central one, corresponding toslave application servers has an attribute “range=0 . . . n”. This meansthe template allows any number of these slave application servers.

The master application server is coupled to a box labelledAI_GroundedExecutionService:AppServer, indicating it can be used to runsuch a software element. It has an associated AIDeploymentSetting boxwhich contains configuration information and deployment informationsufficient to allow the AI_GroundedExecutionService to be automaticallyinstalled, deployed and managed. TheAI_GroundedExecutionService:AppServer is shown as containing threecomponents, labelled AI_GroundedExecutionComponents, and each having anassociated AIDeploymentSetting box. A first of these components is adialog work process, for executing the application components of stepsof the business process, another is an update process, responsible forcommitting work to persistent storage, and another is an enqueueprocess, for managing locks on a database. As shown, the range attributeis 2 . . . n for the update and the dialog work process, meaningmultiple instances of these parts are allowed.

The slave application server has a GroundedExecutionService having onlyone type of AI_GroundedExecutionComponent for any number of dialog workprocesses. The slave application server is shown having a rangeP=Timefunction, meaning it is allowed to be active at given times. Again theservice and the execution component each have an associatedAIDeploymentSetting box.

The master and slave application servers and the database computersystem have an operating system shown as AI_disk: OSDisk. The masterapplication server is shown with an AI_Disk: CIDisk as storage for useby the application components. For the network, each computer system hasa network interface shown as AI_Nic1, coupled to the network shown byAI_Network: subnet1.

The database computer system is coupled to a box labelledAI_GroundedExecutionService: Database, which has only one type ofAI_GroundedExecutionComponent, SD DB for the database. Again the serviceand the execution component each have an associated AIDeploymentSettingbox. AIDeploymentSetting carries the configuration and managementinformation used to deploy, configure, start, manage and change thecomponent. Further details of an example of this are described belowwith reference to FIG. 14. This computer system is coupled to storagefor the database labelled AI_Disk: DBDisk.

Optionally the template can have commands to be invoked by the tools,when generating the grounded model, or generating a changed groundedmodel to change an existing grounded model. Such commands can bearranged to limit the options available, and can use as inputs, parts ofthe template specifying some of the infrastructure design. They can alsouse parts of the unbound model as inputs.

FIG. 14 Grounded Model

The Grounded Model may be generated by a design tool as it transformsthe Unbound Model into the Grounded Model. It can be regarded as acandidate Grounded Model until evaluated and selected as the chosenGrounded Model. The following are some of the characteristics of theexample Grounded Model of FIG. 14 compared to the template shown in FIG.13, from which it is derived.

-   -   The number of instances of GroundedExecutionComponent has been        specified.    -   The GroundedExecutionComponents are executed by a        GroundedExecutionService. The execution relationship is        consistent with that expressed in the Application Packaging        Model.    -   The GroundedExecutionServices are run on a ComputerSystem whose        type has been selected from the Infrastructure Capability Model.    -   There are two update components, Update1 and Update2. There are        two DialogWorkProcesses, DialogWorkProcess1 and        DialogWorkProcess2.    -   The number of slave application servers has been set at zero.

The management system is arranged to make these choices to derive theGrounded Model from the template using the Unbound Model. In the exampleshown, the criteria used for the choice includes the total capacity ofthe system, which must satisfy the time varying Performance Requirementsin the Custom Model. The required capacity is determined by combiningthese Performance Requirements with the aggregated ResourceDemands[Direct and Indirect] of the Application Performance Model. If the firstchoice proves to provide too little capacity, or perhaps too much, thenother choices can be made and evaluated. Other examples can havedifferent criteria and different ways of evaluating how close thecandidate grounded model is to being a best fit.

In some examples the server may only have an OS disk attached; that isbecause the convention in such installations is to NFS mount the CI diskto get its SAP executable files. Other example templates could haveselectable details or options such as details of the CIDisk and theDBDisk being 100 GB, 20 MB/sec, non Raid, and so on. The OS disks can beof type EVA800. The master and slave application servers can have 2 to 5dialog work processes. Computer systems are specified as having 3 GBstorage, 2.6 GHz CPUs and SLES 10-Xen operating system for example.Different parameters can be tried to form candidate Grounded Modelswhich can be evaluated to find the best fit for the desired performanceor capacity or other criteria.

The Grounded Model therefore specifies the precise number and types ofrequired instances of software and hardware deployable entities, such asGroundedExecutionComponent, GroundedExecutionService, andAIComputerSystem. AIDeploymentSettings can include for example:

-   -   InfrastructureSettings such as threshold information for        infrastructure management components, for example        MaxCPUUtilization—if it rises above the set figure, say 60%, an        alarm should be triggered.    -   Management policy can specify further policy information for the        management components—e.g. flex up if utilization rises above        60%    -   GroundedDeploymentSettings which can include all command line        and configuration information so that the system can be        installed, configured and started in a fully functional state.    -   SettingData which can provide additional configuration        information that can override information provided in the        GroundedDeploymentSettings. This allows many

GroundedComponents to share the same GroundedDeploymentSettings (c.f. anotion of typing) with specific parameters or overrides provided bySettingData. Both the GroundedDeploymentSettings and SettingData areinterpreted by the Deployment Service during deployment.

-   -   Data related to possible changes to the component such as        instructions to be carried out when managing changes to the        component, to enable more automation of changes.

Not all attributes are set in the Grounded Model. For example, it doesnot make sense to set MAC addresses in the Grounded Model, since thereis not yet any assigned physical resource.

FIG. 15, an Alternative Adaptive Infrastructure Design Template

FIG. 15 shows an alternative adaptive infrastructure design template, ina form suitable for a centralised secure SD business process. Comparedto FIG. 13, this has only one computer system, hence it is centralised.It shows security features in the form of a connection of the network toan external subnet via a firewall. This is shown by an interfaceAI_Nic:nicFW, and a firewall shown by AI_Appliance: FireWall.

Other templates can be envisaged having any configuration. Otherexamples can include a decentralised secure SD template, a decentralisedhighly available SD template, and a decentralised, secure and highlyavailable SD template.

Bound Model

A Bound Model Instance for a SD system example could have in addition tothe physical resource assignment, other parameters set such as subnetmasks and MAC addresses. A Deployed Model could differ from the BoundModel in only one respect. It shows the binding information for themanagement services running in the system. All the entities would havemanagement infrastructure in the form of for example a managementservice. The implementation mechanism used for the interface to themanagement services is not defined here, but could be a reference to aWeb Service or a SmartFrog component for example. The management servicecan be used to change state and observe the current state. Neither thestate information made available by the management service, nor theoperations performed by it, are necessarily defined in the core of themodel, but can be defined in associated models.

One example of this could be to manage a virtual machine migration. Theapplication managing the migration would use the management servicerunning on the PhysicalComputerSystem to do the migration. Once themigration is completed, the management application would update thedeployed model and bound models to show the new physical system. Careneeds to be taken to maintain consistency of models. All previous modelinstances are kept in the model repository, so when the migration iscomplete, there would be a new instance (version) of the bound anddeployed models.

Information Hiding and the Model Information Flow

It is not always the case that for the MIF all tools and every actor cansee all the information in the model. In particular it is not the casefor deployment services having a security model which requires strongseparation between actors. For example, there can be a very strongseparation between the utility management plane and farms of virtualmachines. If a grounded model is fed to the deployment services of themanagement plane for an enterprise, it will not return any bindinginformation showing the binding of virtual to physical machines, thatinformation will be kept inside the management plane. That means thereis no way of telling to what hardware that farm is bound or what twofarms might be sharing. What is returned from the management plane couldinclude the IP address of the virtual machines in the farms (it onlydeals with virtual machines) and the login credentials for thosemachines in a given farm. The management plane is trusted to manage afarm so that it gets the requested resources. Once the deploymentservice has finished working, one could use application installation andmanagement services to install, start and manage the applications. Ingeneral different tools will see projections of the MIF. It is possibleto extract from the MIF models the information these tools require andpopulate the models with the results the tools return. It will bepossible to transform between the MIF models and the data format thatthe various tools use.

Implementation:

The software parts such as the models, the model repository, and thetools or services for manipulating the models, can be implemented usingany conventional programming language, including languages such as Java,or C compiled following established practice. The servers and networkelements can be implemented using conventional hardware withconventional processors. The processing elements need not be identical,but should be able to communicate with each other, e.g. by exchange ofIP messages.

The foregoing description of embodiments of the invention has beenpresented for purposes of illustration and description. It is notintended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise formdisclosed, and modifications and variations are possible in light of theabove teachings or may be acquired from practice of the invention. Theembodiments were chosen and described in order to explain the principlesbehind the invention and its practical applications to enable oneskilled in the art to utilize the invention in various embodiments andwith various modifications as are suited to the particular usecontemplated. Other variations can be conceived within the scope of theclaims.

1. A method of generating a model representing at least part of acomputer based business process having a number of functional steps,from existing source content specifying the functional steps, and fromsource content of software entities implementing the functional steps,the source content having annotations added, to provide information formodelling, the method having the steps of: collecting the informationprovided by the annotations, and using the information collected by thecollector, to generate representations of the functional steps andsoftware entities which implement the functional steps, and arranged toincorporate these representations in the model.
 2. The method of claim1, having the step of generating for the model a representation ofdemands on computing infrastructure by the software entities.
 3. Themethod of claim 1, at least some of the annotations being descriptiveannotations having statically determinable information identifying thefunctional steps and software entities for implementing the functionalsteps, and the method having the step of reading the source content tocollect the information.
 4. The method of claim 3, the descriptiveannotations using types of entities and types of relationships where thetypes correspond to types used in the model.
 5. The method of claim 1,at least some of the annotations being monitoring annotations arrangedto modify run-time behaviour of the business process to generateinformation relating to run-time behaviour, and the method having thestep of collecting the information relating to run-time behaviour. 6.The method of claim 5, having the step of using the collected run-timebehaviour information, to generate a representation of demands on thecomputing infrastructure by the software entities.
 7. The method ofclaim 6, having the step of correlating the collected information onrun-time behaviour with corresponding representations of softwareentities and functional steps in the model.
 8. The method of claim 5, alevel of detail of the monitoring of run-time behaviour beingconfigurable.
 9. The method of claim 1, having a documentationgenerator, arranged to generate human readable documentation relating tothe functional steps and the software entities for implementing thefunctional steps, from the information collected.
 10. The method ofclaim 1, the model comprising an unbound model, and a grounded model,having the step of using the annotations to generate the unbound model,and generating a mapping of logical components of the unbound model onto computing infrastructure, to provide a grounded model of the businessprocess, suitable for automated deployment on the computinginfrastructure.
 11. Software on a machine readable medium which whenexecuted carries out the method of claim
 1. 12. A system for generatinga model representing at least part of a computer based business processhaving a number of functional steps, from existing source contentspecifying the functional steps, and from source content of softwareentities implementing the functional steps, the source content havingannotations added, to provide information for modelling, the systemhaving: a collector arranged to collect the information provided by theannotations, and a modeller arranged to use the information collected bythe collector, to generate representations of the functional steps andsoftware entities which implement the functional steps, and arranged toincorporate these representations in the model.
 13. The system of claim12, the modeller being arranged to generate for the model arepresentation of demands on computing infrastructure by the softwareentities.
 14. The system of claim 12, at least some of the annotationsbeing descriptive annotations having statically determinable informationidentifying the functional steps and software entities for implementingthe functional steps, and the collector being arranged to read thesource content to collect the information.
 15. The system of claim 14,the descriptive annotations using types of entities and types ofrelationships where the types correspond to types used in the model. 16.The system of claim 12, at least some of the annotations beingmonitoring annotations arranged to modify run-time behaviour of thebusiness process to generate information relating to run-time behaviour,and the collector being arranged such that at least some of theinformation collected by the collector is the information relating torun-time behaviour.
 17. The system of claim 16, the modeller beingarranged to use the collected run-time behaviour information, togenerate a representation of demands on the computing infrastructure bythe software entities.
 18. The system of claim 17, the modeller beingarranged to correlate the collected information on run-time behaviourwith corresponding representations of software entities and functionalsteps in the model.
 19. The system of claim 16, a level of detail of themonitoring of run-time behaviour being configurable.
 20. The system ofclaim 12, having a documentation generator, arranged to generate humanreadable documentation relating to the functional steps and the softwareentities for implementing the functional steps, from the informationcollected.
 21. The system of claim 12, the model comprising an unboundmodel, and a grounded model, the modeller being arranged to generate theunbound model, and the system further having a design service togenerate a mapping of logical components of the unbound model on tocomputing infrastructure, to provide a grounded model of the businessprocess, suitable for automated deployment on the computinginfrastructure.